Said Too Much

  There are a lot of stupid things I come across when looking at Helpful Hints to Improve Your Writing but there is one that has been popping up everywhere lately and it's really getting to me. It is that you are not to use the word "said" as in:

  "Blah, blah, blah," said so and so.

  At first this made sense to me because I thought they meant what my teacher taught my class in the second grade which was to not always use the word "said" in order to encourage us to both be more creative in our writing and to learn more words (good teacher). But what they actually mean is that you should quite literally never, Ever, EVER say the word "said".

  The more books I pick up (and read; some I just pick up and put back down again others I move to the side slightly) I've noticed that a lot of people are following this advice to the point where, as you get further into the book, you can actually feel them struggling to come up with more and more words for how to describe the noises that come out of someone's mouth and this, to me, is bad writing.

  It is all very well to exclaim something or mumble something, to ululate, to complain, to blubber, to laugh, to emit, ejaculate, articulate, verbalize, relate, retaliate, bellow, tell, utter, shout, wail, howl, yell, moan and groan, and scream and screech and whoop and shriek and cry
 
But
 
Sometimes people are just Saying Things and I think that needs to be Said.